"For me? I see. I am beginning, for the first time, to understand the meaning of words. You did it for me? This is not a foreign language which you are speaking—I suppose it is English?"
"Geoffrey, will you listen to me for a moment?"
"Certainly; and I shall understand that I am listening to you, to your own self, for the first time. It is someone else I have listened to before. Proceed, Mr. Philip Ayre."
She seemed to find some difficulty in proceeding. Very soon she was to give another child unto the world. Perhaps it was that which made her seem so weak. She never had been very pretty. She had not grown prettier with the passage of the years. Now, as she stood trembling so that she had to clutch at the table to keep her stand, she seemed an insignificant, pale-faced, ill-shaped woman—not a thing of beauty to the eye. She seemed, also, to be in mortal terror.
"Geoffrey, I would have told you all along, only I was afraid."
"Afraid to tell me that you had set up as a rival in the business? I see. Go on."
"I wouldn't have done it at all if we hadn't been so short of money."
"Which was because you had a blundering fool for a husband. That is clear. Well?"
"The children wanted things, and—and there were the bills, and—and the rent."
"Which you paid. Now I understand Mr. Briggs' civility, the tradesmen's reticence. I have been living on my wife. What a blind worm a man who has the use of his eyes can be!"